Current power utility company customers have been increasingly demanding to be notified using their preferred mode of communication (e.g., email message, text message, automatic phone call message, etc.) when power is lost and when power is restored to the customer's location (also referred to as customer premises). In conventional power outage notification systems, many customers have received wrong notifications or do not receive notifications on a timely basis (i.e., as soon as power conditions change). Often, customers have received over notifications of the wrong power conditions at their customer premises. That is, for example, a customer that has had power restored to their customer premises may continue to repeatedly receive power outage notification messages for many hours. This frustrates customers and can detrimentally affect the customer satisfaction associated with a power utility company in an increasingly competitive environment. These erroneous, uncoordinated, untimely, and over notifications to customers have been in part caused because power line conditions at specific customer locations (also referred to as customer premises) in a power distribution network have not been reliably determinable in current power distribution networks.
Recently smart power usage meters (Smart Meters) have been installed in many customer premises. These Smart Meters can communicate via a wireless network with a central monitoring station. However, the wireless communication network is very limited in bandwidth and messaging throughput. On occasion, communications from Smart Meters over a grid powered wireless mesh network fail to be received by the central monitoring station. Therefore, not all Smart Meters in a commercial power distribution network (especially in a wide area power distribution system serving large numbers of customers) can be monitored contemporaneously in real time by a central monitoring station. The central monitoring station has to operate with a level of uncertainty regarding which specific customer locations are currently experiencing power outage conditions and which specific customer locations have not lost power or have their power restored following a power outage. The central monitoring station often does not have all relevant information to reliably determine whether power is down or power is up at specific customer locations. Customers suffer from not having the correct notices on a timely basis as demanded, and often receive repeated wrong notifications (over notifications).